French President Emmanuel Macron expressed, Friday evening, October 20, “his deep concern about the uncertain situation” of Mohamed Bazoum and called “for his immediate release as well as that of his wife and son.”
Lawyers for Niger’s president, who was overthrown in a July 26 coup, had earlier rejected the junta’s accusations of his attempted escape.
Thursday evening, the military regime had in fact affirmed that Mohamed Bazoum had “tried to escape” with his family and other people, by wanting to borrow “helicopters belonging to a foreign power” from the outskirts of Niamey towards Nigeria. . He specified that this attempt had failed and that “the main perpetrators and some of their accomplices” had been arrested.
“A new red line has been crossed”
“We energetically reject these trumped-up accusations against President Bazoum,” Mohamed Seydou Diagne, coordinator of a collective of lawyers for the ousted president, said in a statement sent to Agence France-Presse (AFP). He also claimed that Mr. Bazoum, “his wife and son are being held incommunicado, without access to lawyers or the outside world.” On Friday morning, “the doctor was denied access while bringing food to the family,” he said. According to Mr. Diagne, Mr. Bazoum’s entourage has not heard from him “since the night of Wednesday to Thursday.”
Me Diagne estimated that “with this incommunicado detention, it is a new red line which has been crossed by a junta which continues to violate the fundamental rights of our client. She will have to answer for her actions,” he said. Mr. Bazoum had until now been sequestered by soldiers in his presidential residence in Niamey since the coup.
“Not only must the military authorities provide us with proof that President Bazoum and his family are alive, but above all, they must release them immediately,” says another lawyer for the collective, Reed Brody.
On September 18, Mr. Bazoum took legal action in West Africa to request his release and the restoration of constitutional order in Niger.